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Sunday, March 31, 2013

Today, my people, we spotlight two of the epic new series which will air this week: THE VILLAGE over at BBC and BARABBAS at Reelz!

THE VILLAGE AT BBC

Starting tonight, Sunday March 31st, over at BBC is new series THE VILLAGE an epic drama series starring Maxine Peake and John Simm, charting the life and turbulent times of one English village across the whole of the 20th century, written by Bafta-winning writer Peter Moffat. The camera never leaves the village. Births, deaths, love and betrayal, great political events, upheavals in national identity, ways of working, rules kept and rebellions made, sex, religion, class, the shaping of modern memory – all refracted through the lives of the villagers and the village... The series will start in 1914 and will jump to 1920 within six episodes! Beginning in 1914, it tells the story of one man, Bert Middleton, who lives across the entire 100 years. His parents, John (John Simm) and Grace (Maxine Peake) struggle to provide for Bert and his older brother, Joe (Nico Mirallegro). The 6-part drama also stars Rupert Evans, Juliet Stevenson, Jim Cartright, Emily Beecham and Charlie Murphy. Unlike DOWNTON ABBEY the series won't focus on the frivolous snobbishness and the superficial lives of the high class but on the poor villagers and ordinary people throughout the century!

Describing the story, Moffat said himself: "I’m interested in the very big and the very small. I wanted to know what it felt like to watch your son leave for war in 1914 and see the look in his eyes when he came home and then watch him leave again, as well as how to wash his uniform and what the postcards he sent home from France actually looked like; to know what it was to die from overwork and undernourishment in the Twenties, as well as how to retrieve a smoked ham from up a chimney."

BARABBAS AT REELZ

Over at Reelz, a new historical series has been aired earlier this week, but if I got it right it will run this weekend too as an Easter event. BARABBAS is a historical mini series taking us back to the Roman Empire and picking up where the Bible left off: it tells the story of Barabbas, the common criminal whose life was spared when Jesus was sentenced to death. The series star Billy Zane in the title role, magnetic Filippo Nigro is Pontius Pilate, Marcho Foschi is Jesus of Nazareth... Unlike History Channel's THE BIBLE series, which is currently airing in front of huge viewership but isn't getting any critical praise and is appealing mostly to religious people, BARABBAShas been complimented for the fact that it does a better and more engaging job of exploring faith managing to be both thought-provoking and at times emotional, doing well at illustrating common scepticisms of Christianity while also showing Barabbas’ own transformation.

The Village should be a good one. I like historical epics that focus on the people of a country and not just on the big names or the wealthy. I think that is how you get a real view of how things really were. How they dealt with rationing and how they got around it is pretty interesting and funny at times.

yep, that is what I like too. There is an interesting reality show at Discovery Channel in which they put a couple of people into a setting of a certain era and they live in it the original way for some time in front of cameras. One of the seasons had a woman and two men living on a farm set into the pre WW2 years and it was extremely interesting watching what they ate, how they lived, the rations during the war....

If it were called The Town I might be tempted to give it a try. The Village reminds me of a very disappointing movie in which everyone thought he spoke like the way people used to speak English in fairy tales. Do you know what I mean?

Don't you mean the first 20 seconds? That movie could've been so scary. All the director should've done was introduce a real monster. We would, at first, believe the monster to be fake - one of the villagers wearing a scary suit - and then we'd be shocked to find the legend to be true after all. See, Dezz, I should have never become a teacher.

I love Billy Zane and Barabbas should be very intense. Not into The Village, it looks like a total yawn fest because the themes it's exploring have been done to death. None of the characters look the least bit interesting and who the eff cares what these morons did during WWII. They ran around all paranoid about Nazis and gossiping about each other.

I thought you'd like the war setting and the fact that the show isn't about spoilt upper class snobs :) And you know the villagers look good when they take of their shirts while chopping wood, you know...